Carols with Brass
Saturday, Nov 26, 2011, 7:30 pm
George St. United Church

Featuring:
VENABRASS, the Venables family
IAN SADLER

Brass and timpani and organ and 100 voices raised in song! What better way to welcome the festive season? Venabrass, virtuoso brass players who are all members of the Venables family, will join Ian Sadler and the Singers for sing-along favourites and more. Be sure to welcome the season by hearing the premiere of a newly commissioned composition by Len Ballantine.

VENABRASS
The Venabrass are virtuoso brass players---and they are all members of the Venables family. Pictured in the photograph, from left to right, are Marcus Venables, Robert Venables, Brindley Venables, and Barrington Venables. All play for the North York Temple Band of the Salvation Army. The young Marcus Venables already has an album of his own music recorded. Robert Venables, the NYT band’s principal cornet, is a professional freelance trumpeter who has performed with a wide range of ensembles including the True North Brass, Hannaford Street Silver Band, Intrada Brass, Hamilton Philharmonic, Toronto Philharmonia, and The Canadian Opera Company. Barrington Venables, the band's principal trombone, is a Canadian Staff Band alumnus. And Brindley Venables, who received tuition from his father Robert at a very young age, is also a remarkabley fine soloist with the NYT band.

IAN SADLER
Ian Sadler is a Canadian concert organist and choral director. Since taking first Prize in the USA's International Organ Playing Competition in Syracuse in 1986, Ian has devoted himself to the concert platform with organ recitals in Britain (Westminster Abbey, King's College Chapel, Cambridge), France (Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris), USA, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, and Denmark. In Canada, he has performed in inaugural series on new concert hall organs, including in Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall, Calgary's Jack Singer Hall, and the Winspeare Centre in Edmonton. As a regular performer in the North American International Liszt Festival, Ian has performed the complete organ works of Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Reubke. In 1999, he represented Canada as the first Canadian member of the International Jury for the Liszt Organ Playing Competition in Budapest, Hungary.

Ian has performed concertos with The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, The Hamilton Philharmonic, and The Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra and with the Timmins and North Bay Symphony Orchestras. Ian's discography is extensive with a series of CD's on major organs in Toronto (Thomson Hall, Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, and St. James' Cathedral), a CD from Stratford of organ recital favourites entitled The Sadler Selection, and a CD devoted to the music of Mozart for the 250th Anniversary Celebrations. In 1999, Ian won a Juno Award. He has further recorded many programmes for the CBC and was featured last year on BBC's Radio 2 performing the organ music of Vaughan Williams. Ian's CD Romantic Music for Organ Vol. I, which was recorded at St. James' Cathedral in Toronto, was released in February 2008. In March of that year, he recorded a further CD on the fine historic Casavant organ of St. John's Cathedral, Newfoundland.

Born in England, Ian began his musical training as a boy chorister for five years at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. He attended The King's School, Canterbury from where he won the Organ Scholarship to Bristol University. During postgraduate study at London University, Ian was Organ Scholar at St. Paul's Cathedral for two years. Before moving to Canada, his final engagement in the UK was to play the organ in the movie Chariots of Fire. In 1980, Ian moved to Canada following his appointment as Director of Music at Toronto's Grace Church on-the-Hill and Choral Director at Upper Canada College.

Ian is Artistic Director of the Stratford Concert Choir, founder and conductor of the Stratford Children's Concert Choir, and Director of the Cathedral Singers of Ontario.

For his dedication to promoting the organ and Canadian music, both at home and abroad, The Royal Canadian College of Organists honoured Ian in 2007 with their highest award, “Fellow of The Royal Canadian College of Organists.”